And we have our winner!

• Alejandro Olivo -  Lompoc, CA

Thanks to everyone who entered – we have more cool contests on the way before the year is out!

Lots of contests going on here after we laid low for a while… Next up we have a G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra DVD Prize Pack to give away.

G.I. Joe comes out today (November 3rd) on DVD and Blu-ray and thanks to the folks at Paramount Home Entertainment we have not only the two-disc DVD, but also some cool goodies to go along with it.

Here’s the official G.I. Joe DVD/Blu-ray announcement:

After earning nearly $300 million in worldwide box office grosses during its theatrical run, G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra is set to make another boatload of money this November 3rd, when the film comes out on DVD and Blu-ray. Available in multiple formats, G.I. Joe fans can take the film home for $19.99 as a one-disc DVD, for $24.99 as a two-disc DVD, or for $29.99 as a two-disc Blu-ray.

If you opt for the two-disc DVD or Blu-ray, you’ll get access to a digital copy of the film, as well as two featurettes, “The Big Bang Theory: The Making of G.I. JOE” and “Next-Gen Action: The Amazing Visual FX and Design of G.I. JOE.” Oh yeah, there’s one more special feature I would be remiss to mention. It’s a little hard to explain, so I’ll let the press release do the talking.

After raking in worldwide grosses of nearly $300 million, it’s no surprise that G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra was getting a sequel. Now, thanks to a Korean news site, we know that G.I. Joe 2 will begin filming by the end of the year.

The article (which comes our way thanks to iesb) focuses on Korean actor Lee Byeong-Heon, who played the inimitable Storm Shadow. The report declares that Byeong-Heon will “be starting the filming by the end of this year and has been contracted for the 3rd sequel, also!”

So we just finished telling you why the Summer of 2009 was the season of bad movies. Now, as if to validate our point (sarcasm alert) Variety has just announced that the Summer of ‘09 has set a new record as the highest grossing summer of all time at the U.S. domestic box office.

So there you have it, folks, it’s official: Hollywood has no reason to ever hire good writers, produce good scripts, or offer us anything better at the multiplex than what Michael Bay can half-envision.

Awesome.

Well, the summer movie season is officially over, and while box office earnings are way up, it seems like the quality of the films have actually gone way down.  But for every few badly-written movies (like X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Transformers 2, and G.I. Joe–though some will say it’s not that bad), there was a diamond in the rough like District 9.  So why were so many movies so bad in the summer of ‘09, even if they did make a lot of money?  Hint: The Writers Strike!

Before the summer began, I wrote an article about how the 2007 Writers Strike might affect the summer 2009 movies.  I speculated that back in 2007, studios were nervous about how long the writers strike could last, leaving them with a possible lack of films for the fall/winter 2008 and all-important summer 2009 season (early May to late August 2009). To make sure they had big films lined up for Summer ‘09, the studios pushed to have their big-budget scripts quick-finished before the Writers Guild of America’s (WGA) contracts were up in November 2007 and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) in summer of 2008.

Here are the lucky winners of our G.I. Joe T-shirt giveaway:

• Omri Alon – Seattle, WA
• Miguel Lopez – Miami, FL
• Bruno Fragnito – Ontario, Canada

Thanks to everyone who entered and keep an eye out for upcoming contests from Screen Rant!

A lot people out there who are looking forward to G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra are fans of the 1980s cartoon, so Screen Rant is giving away 6 G.I. Joe T-shirts from that era. We have two designs and three winners will get one of each of the T-shirts below. These G.I. Joe T-shirts were kindly supplied by 80sTees.com.

Summer is winding down and two of the blockbuster season’s biggest entries, Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra have both debuted in theaters to mixed opinion amongst audiences, total lambasting by critics, bale fulls of money made at the box office for Paramount and even more bale fulls made in merchandising by Hasbro, the company whose toys were the inspiration for both films.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra opened recently to a better-than-expected box office opening of $56 million domestically, and almost $100 million worldwide. The movie itself undoubtedly has its flaws (the acting, some of the dubious special effects, the dialogue…), but nonetheless it’s a load of fun.

With our real American heroes so busy trying to stop the bad guys from taking over the world, do you ever wonder what they do for fun? The guys over at FunnyOrDie.com have answered that question through a G.I. Joe-inspired ballad that features the likes of Ben Stiller, Julianne Moore, Henry Rollins, Vinnie Jones and Alan Tudyk. Check out the hilarious video below:

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra managed to take in $100 million at the worldwide box office including a better-than-expected take of $56.2 million domestically. And although the film cost upwards of $300 million to make and market (and word of mouth hasn’t exactly been all that glowing), this first-week victory seems to have been substantial enough for Paramount to absolutely move forward with a $equel.

This week:

G.I. Joe shoots up the top spot at the box office; Jennifer Aniston goes to prison; Gunsmoke rides again; The Losers begin and Renny Harlin goes to Russia.

When I was a kid growing up in the 80’s, I was never short of some great toys to play with: Thundercats, Transformers, Silverhawks, and of course, G.I. Joe. If you were anything like me and my buddies, then you had some epic battles in the sandbox involving plenty of Joe figures, pine cone bombs and firecracker explosions. In fact, we had so many injuries in our Joe battles, it led to some unusual but necessary action figure body transplants. Surely, I couldn’t have been the only kid in America to own a Joe with the head of Shipwreck, body of Lady J, Snake Eye’s arms and Barbeque’s legs?

Apparently, someone at Paramount also enjoyed G.I. Joe battles growing up because they’ve filmed a two-part toy battle called G.I. Joe: Invasion of Cobra Island. It’s a decent, inventive, if not amusing attempt at reproducing the sandbox battles we had as kids, but using every cool Joe toy Hasbro offered and some neat props to go along with.

We haven’t set this up in a while but readers seem to appreciate it, so while we do have a G.I. Joe review where you can leave comments, we’ve set up this as a place where you can discuss G.I. Joe spoilers to your heart’s content.

If you’re posting comments here, assume that anyone in the conversation has seen the movie – if you haven’t seen the movie, I would recommend you don’t read the comments here until you have.

Short Version: G.I. Joe is a summer popcorn action movie done right.

Screen Rant reviews G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

I’ll start right off by saying that G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra is what the Transformers franchise should be.

Following months of trailers and clips that frankly, made this movie look like it was going to be awful, imagine my surprise when I actually ended up enjoying it. I don’t recall ever seeing a marketing campaign that so made me NOT want to see a movie that turned out to be decent.

The last time we were “Crushing On” someone, it was Ginny Weasley (Bonnie Wright) from the Harry Potter films. The “Crushing On” series focuses on one relatively unknown or underappreciated actor/actress that may not be popular with mainstream audiences (yet) but that we feel should get some exposure for their work. Today we continue our new semi-regular series “Crushing On” with a name that most people have heard but few people know anything about: Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is the big summer tentpole of the week and of course, with the premiere of the film comes all the attention uninformed mainstream networks try to pile on at the eleventh hour.

In regards to G.I. Joe, it was an inevitable that we would eventually have to hear one particular voice of dissent speaking up: Those who think that G.I. Joe has been stripped of the ‘Americanness’ that once made it great. I wouldn’t call this news, per se, but it definitely made it onto a major news network (MSNBC), so if you haven’t seen it, take a look at the video before we get into the lengthy debate:

We’re only a few days from seeing Stephen Sommers’ vision of G.I. Joe with the release of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. To wet your appetite, we have eleven new movie stills to show you, including a long-awaited look at Destro’s (Chris Eccleston) mask!

At a junket in Australia hosted by the native press outlet, Jabba, when asked about the word going around the water cooler (read: the internet), Steven Sommers quickly smothered the flaming rumor that he had been canned from G.I. Joe and that the film was being re-edited due to poor testing and flaccid online response.

Ain’t It Cool News has two snitches readers who have seen G.I. Joe: The Rise Cobra and are reporting back to let people know what they thought about the film, which pretty much everybody (that I know at least) has written off as a guranteed bomb.

So, did AICN’s readers confirm what everyone has been expecting? Yes and No.

However, one thing there is NO debate about is this new G.I. Joe viral video, which features one brave Joe in an accelerator suit hopping on a skateboard for some extreme half-pipe action! It’s pretty awesome!

Today we the two newest posters for G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra as well as several of the latest TV Spots for your viewing pleasure.

To start, here’s the latest for G.I. Joe featuring two of the coolest characters that will be in the movie: Snake Eyes and his sword-fight dance partner, Storm Shadow:

[UPDATE: Ok so now we've got a solid look at Destro too! See bottom of the post!]

The Japanese trailer for G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra recently hit the web and the guys over at Cinematical were savvy enough to spot a little Easter egg tucked into an otherwise carbon-copy version of the domestic trailer: a first look at Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Cobra Commander!

Up until now all we’ve had are toys and word-of-mouth to go on, as far as what Cobra Commander would look like in the film, but now we know for sure – and knowing… well, you know. Check out the new Cobra Commander:

[Update: We've added the remaining 2 '9' posters to complete the set]

We posted up the posters numbered 7 and 8 for the upcoming adventure, titled 9, by Shane Acker (based on his Academy nominated short of the same name) earlier this weekend and now we have the rest of them to finish the series: posters numbered 1-6 and 9. In addition to that, we also have the newest poster from G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra which features Rachel Nichols as Scarlett

There aren’t too many tent pole films left to be released this summer; the only three REALLY big films would be Public Enemies, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. That’s three more chances for Hollywood to either disappoint fans or blow them out of the water. Public Enemies and Harry Potter should be pretty safe bets for a solid performance but the G.I. Joe is still a project that could go either way.

Everyone has been talking about how bad they think the humor will be, how lame the action looks and those damn accelerator suits really have people’s knickers in a twist. But one thing I haven’t heard people bring up in awhile is the look of Cobra Commander (Joseph Gordon-Levitt).

Confused?

The latest trailer for G.I. Joe has hit and it reveals a bit more of the tone of the film. It seems to take the Transformers approach to an action movie based on a children’s toy – and again, it’s just not working for me. What exactly am I referring to? The combination of dead serious line delivery by one actor followed by dumb-assed goofy humor in the very next scene.

Check out the latest trailer to see what I mean.

There’s a lot of turmoil surrounding G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra right now. Fan reaction to the full trailer has been lukewarm; stars of the film like Marlon Wayans have already had to swear that G.I. Joe won’t suck; there was even a recent rumor that the film tested so badly at early screenings it led to director Stephen Sommers (The Mummy) being fired from post-production!

Well, to assuage moviegoer fears Paramount is taking the proper steps by…releasing even more promo materials for the film! That’s right, to prove just how awesome G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra really is, the studio has released four new exclusive character posters to some lucky websites and a new TV spot for the masses. Check them out:

This RUMOR is coming to us by way of First Showing, who heard it from Latino Review, who heard it on the message boards for producer Don Murphy (Transformers). The rumor being whispered down the links is that Stephen Sommers (The Mummy), director of the upcoming G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra was fired from post-production on the film by Paramount, after a test screening of G.I. Joe allegedly resulted in the lowest scores in the studio’s history!

We’ve already seen numerous posters, trailers and images from G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, and today we have yet another batch of new images from the film. It’s a good mix of uniform shots, mid-scene combat and gun-pointing – just what we want from our G.I. Joe movie!

Check out all six of the new G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra images below:

So far the only G.I. Joe posters we seen have shown off more black leather than actual human skin. Today we have the official international poster for G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra, and it’s pretty much a rehash of the posters we’ve seen before (the characters are pretty much in the same poses), only with two noticeable differences:

The first real images of what look to be Cobra Commander and Destro!

The background of the whole G.I. Joe mythology, which dates back to World War II, plus all of the military activity (outfits and such…) we’ve seen in the footage released so far, suggests some sort of political angle within the movie. Well, according to producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, that’s not the case:

This week:

Wolverine is Number 1! Keanu Reeves goes to Cartagena; Marcus Nispell captains The Last Voyage of Demeter; we learn about The Pale Horsemen; Jim Carrey likes The Beaver; Natalie Portman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Rainn Wilson know Hesher and three more people jump into the Hot Tub Time Machine; And last but not least, The Road finally gets a new release date.

The new international trailer for G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra looks to hit all its cues, but viewers might come away with the early symptoms of CGI fatigue.

We’re introduced to all the players, including General Hawk (Dennis Quaid), Destro (Christopher Eccleston) and The Baroness (Sienna Miller). We see that Cobra’s minions get metallic masks, in keeping with G.I. Joe tradition. We learn that the Joes get elaborate bio-suits that turn them into semi-superheroes.